Lost in Translation: Rewrite the Last Page

Spoiler alert: This article assumes you’ve seen what passed for a final episode.

If you’re like me, Sunday night’s Lost series finale may not have exactly hit the spot. Sure, everyone’s dead — and some might say not a moment too soon. Well, nearly everyone: Inscrutable Ben Linus isn’t “ready” to “move on” and is left to his own devices right outside that multi-denominational church where the high school reunion from hell is going on. So, naturally, the dramatic plot device we are thinking of is: Blockbuster Feature Film.

I made my disappointment about the trajectory of final season clear in a post on my personal blog three weeks ago, so I won’t dwell on the ultimate dramatic sin of the series: Since anything is possible, nothing is impossible.

So, we have no idea (and it doesn’t matter) why there was a polar bear on the island, or why no children could be born there, or who The Others really were, or why a trip through the light cave turns the Man in Black into an undead, nearly omnipotent, smoky antihero but just sort of makes Jack and Desmond tired. There are probably dozens of other plot points that — to me — were presented as important details but tended instead to be diversionary tactics, or, even worse, not worth the trouble to reconcile and account even in a season which added episodes and gave itself a luxurious 2½-hour finale to wrap up whatever it wanted to.

Though I didn’t care for the triumph of the spiritual over the scientific as the series’ driving force, I did in fairness like the underlying idea that the Island was a cork to a bottle containing some measure of death and destruction. Also, that the Island could be moved as a means of making it an elusive target for those whose agendas would be, for whatever reason, to exploit that power. Very Heisenberg-ish.

But as the smoke cleared Lost became, as Twitter fan Joe Hewitt put it, “a soap opera, not an intellectual sci-fi thriller” and thus “a waste of time.”

The other major TV drama in recent years to conclude controversially was, of course, The Sopranos. I was equally dissatisfied with that, but came around as I read thoughtful takes of what actually happened at that New Jersey diner.

This time I am convinced that there is an entirely better ending, limiting ourselves to only the canon we know.

And I’m counting on you to come up with one.

So, have at the Reddit Widget below. Make it all worthwhile, and tell us what should have been on the last page of Lost.